The Poscast Ep. 1 — We’re Back

Yes, the Poscast — despite absolutely 0.0 demand — is back and clocks in at a mere 55 minutes, our shortest recorded Poscast ever!* Michael Schur is executive producer of Parks & Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. There were all the usual technical issues . We discuss his absurd good fortune with the Red Sox winning AGAIN, we talk a bit about replay in baseball and we draft sports nicknames, a draft I definitely won.

*Several podcasts were shorter but this was became the recording stopped in the middle.

Two things. One, I didn’t know that Shaq went by “The Big Aristotle,” and I can’t believe that wasn’t chosen. Two: Here’s what I hate about the baseball replay system. While I agree with JoePo’s points, I don’t hate the challenge system. Here’s what I hate: the fact that you’d get 1 challenge for the first 6 innings, 2 for the last three. Either give one per three innings (we can debate if you get to accumulate them) or just get three for the whole game (with maybe an extra for extra innings). Managers can decide individually if the last three innings are more important, but baseball shouldn’t impose that importance into the rules.

I started following baseball in the mid 50’s and thought ‘The Man’, ‘the Say Hey Kid’, and ‘Leo the Lip’ were the best nicknames going at the time. Also current then were Hammering Hank, the Barber, and the Commerce Comet. Spahn, Sain, ‘n pray fer rain. I was just a grade school kid who listened to Harry Carey on Cardinal broadcasts and I first thought that he was the one who made up all the nicknames. Nowadays, it seems to me that baseball has much fewer nicknames than the other sports.

It’s really unfortunate how many great nicknames you missed – the whole host of Babe Ruth’s nicknames, or Ted Williams’. But for my money, there are two huge things you should have mentioned. Number one, “Refrigerator” was such a good nickname that it became William Perry’s name, so much so that the NICKNAME then had to get a nickname, and people just started calling him “the Fridge.”. Second, I really love geographic nicknames. The Galloping Grey Ghost of Gonzaga is the best of the bunch that includes The Hick from French Lick; and of course, there’s the perennial favorite alliterative geographic nickname: The Commerce Comet. But the best nickname of today is, hands-down, The Millville Meteor. It’s the same as Mantle’s nickname: streaking, heavenly body; alliterative; includes the birthplace. And it invokes Mantle, for a player whom many consider to BE the modern Mickey Mantle. It’s at once an homage to Mantle, and a perfect descriptor of the player who is called by it.

The Millville Meteor actually began life as a sarcastic rebuke to the idea that you could compare Mike Trout and Mickey Mantle, especially after one season (because it’s inherently unreasonable to compare anyone to Mickey Mantle – he’s one of the greatest players of all time, and putting a young player in those terms, and trying to forecast his career after one season to say that he’s going to be as good as Mickey Mantle, is just unlikely, the same way expecting a flamethrowing lefty with poor control to turn into Randy Johnson is unlikely).

The sense of it was something like, “Oh, yeah, sure, he’s going to be just as good as Mickey Mantle. I bet they’ll call him the Millville Meteor.” And then things happened from there – the nickname spread, initially as a practical joke, and then in its own right, and of course Trout put in another season at an extraordinary level and continued to be one of the best players in baseball.

It is definitely one of the most interesting nicknames in baseball. I just find the complexity/uniqueness of its origin really fascinating.

On the subject of nicknames that *became* the guy’s name, I can’t believe “Babe” Ruth didn’t even get mentioned. Not sure about the rules of the draft, but if you can also claim “Bambino” and “Sultan of Swat” with that pick, it’s a no-brainer. (Does any other athlete have THREE great nicknames?)

You crushed that draft, Joe. Agree on nicknames that take over (as) real names — Satchel Paige, you may have to think about his real name every few years. Boom-Boom Geoffrion, I have no idea what his real name is. Rocket Richard, like Refrigerator, it lost the The.

The Answer? Awful. The Glove — never heard it. Sweetness? He was Walter 95% of the time.

Basically soccer fans don’t want to introduce a new rule to the pros that they can’t introduce to youth soccer.

With rare exception, every level of soccer is played the same way. So it doesn’t matter whether you are playing youth soccer or amateur soccer or club soccer or international. The requirements for playing the game are the exact same. The dimensions, the equipment, the rules. All the same. So if you introduce instant replay to the highest level then you lose the close connection between the levels.

Contrast that with baseball where college has many different rules that pro, there’s the DH in the different leagues. In hockey and basketball the court/ice has different dimensions on different levels, and football has several important differences in the rules. Basketball also has a different clock, etc etc.